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Pheace: Not precisely. Storing your games was never part of my physical store purchases, while for Digital stores, digital storage really is part of the package when you buy a game. It's one of the reasons many people are fond of getting a digital backup despite already having physical copies.

Well, given that both GOG and Steam contractually reserve the right to shut their doors at any time for any reason, not keeping local backups of your games demonstrates about the same (lack of) common sense as leaving them in the shop indefinitely to be picked up.

Common sense dictates that you should make local backups and use the online storage as a convenience feature, nothing more.

GOG Terms of Use:

You agree that GOG may terminate your log in access to the Service, including your user name and password, at any time for any reason without prior notice or liability.

Steam Subscriber Agreement:

NEITHER VALVE NOR ITS AFFILIATES GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S) OR ANY INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN CONNECTION THEREWITH.

Fictionvision: ...With mass trading and reselling DRM free games, people will pass them around and there is no mechanism to stop the previous purchasers from playing the games anymore....

Trilarion: Sure. But also now there is no mechanism of stopping people from playing passed around copies of GOG games. Both is illegal and both is comparably easy. So I would then demand DRM for both cases or for none.

Right, that's how you personally feel. But from a game publisher point of view, it would be yet another (extra) reason not to want to release a game DRM-free, when you have to worry about _also_ the abuse of second-hand sales, not only piracy through sharing.

From a practical point of view, it is different to actively share your DRM-free games to others, or to keep a DRM-free game to yourself while selling the "original" away. In the first case there is at least some chance of getting caught, in the latter, none whatsoever. Only in the latter case, you are the only person who knows (or can even find out) what you did.

Trajhenkhetlive: It would be a bit of a backpedal on the DRM stance but it's the least obtrusive way of doing things.

Martek: If GOG 'backpedals' on DRM then count me as a from-then-on non-customer. I'll take my 300 games "shelf" and go home! :) /jk

Actually, GOG does have DRM in a sense. For example, I've only DL'd maybe 50 of those 300+ games.

If GOG were to close tomorrow, I could "lose" (access to) over 250 games that I have purchased.

That's not really DRM any more than that you had bough (paid) a retail game from a store, but decided to let the store keep it in their storage room, and you'd go to pick it up from them sometime in the future, if ever. Also in that case if they closed their doors, you couldn't pick up the games later anymore.

I personally don't consider the GOG game purchasing transaction really complete before I've downloaded (picked up) the game from their servers to my local repository. If I don't do that, then I am putting faith to GOG to store them for me.

There are and have been digital stores that don't offer such "unlimited" storage service. E.g. from Strategy First, at least earlier you could only download your DRM-free games from them a certain number of times (like 3 or 5 times), or maybe it was a time limit, e.g. a couple of months. And I recall some digital music shop earlier having a similar system.

timppu: ... From a practical point of view, it is different to actively share your DRM-free games to others, or to keep a DRM-free game to yourself while selling the "original" away. In the first case there is at least some chance of getting caught, in the latter, none whatsoever. Only in the latter case, you are the only person who knows (or can even find out) what you did. ...

You can resell information content like music or movies or books if they are wrapped onto physical media without problems but you cannot if the physical media is taken away, although copying the information from the physical wrappers isn't impossible, for music CDs or movie DVDs even quite simple. It seems a bit like an arbitrary distinction.

Yes, I see the point. Allowing reselling of standalone programms without DRM could make piracy even easier although it is easy enough already. Now the question is if this makes any difference when your stance is that you cannot fight piracy anyway. Obviously DRM free advocates believe that a little bit of risk of getting caught is necessary to hold pirates and other criminals at bay, at least that would be what I believe.

I now think that reselling of used games will come earlier to Steam than to GOG, if it comes at all. DRM actually has an advantage there.

How do you figure? The bottom line is, part of the terms of sale is continued access to the games in your account, and GOG reserves the right to limit that access, which at the very least would be considered DRM, at most a breach of contract. In addition, all GOG exe files come with a wraparound EULA that must be agreed to, some of which have had extra terms and conditions from the publisher. This is most definitely DRM.

However, YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE A MORON TO NOT DOWNLOAD THE GAMES YOU HAVE BOUGHT AND KEEP A BACKUP COPY IN CASE THE SITE WENT BANKRUPT.

The terms of service of a digital distributor go out the window with insolvency. But at least with GoG if you keep a copy of your game locally, you can always install it again and play it again. If you lose your copy and GoG ceases to work, it's your own fault.

pds41: The terms of service of a digital distributor go out the window with insolvency. But at least with GoG if you keep a copy of your game locally, you can always install it again and play it again. If you lose your copy and GoG ceases to work, it's your own fault.

Yeah, I never really understood people who buy games here but don't download them to make a local copy. Hopefully GoG will be around for a long time, but the first thing I do when buying a game is download it to my RAID server; at some point I also have to get around to backing up the game installer directory to a stack of Blu-Rays in case the RAID dies.

It's worth noting that most places I buy digital content from (e.g. stock photo stores) only allow you to download the file once, or for a limited time after purchase. Game sites like GoG and Steam are the exception in the digital content market.

movieman523: Yeah, I never really understood people who buy games here but don't download them to make a local copy.

Half of the point for me to only buy digital products nowadays is because I don't need to store them on my physical devices. If GOG goes under, I'll just torrent the stuff I have bought - but I refuse to store all that stuff at my end.

I make a local copy because hard disc storage is so damn cheap. It also shortens the installation time in case I decide I want to play a game. Actually only the optical discs were a bit more effort to handle but hard disc space is almost abundant, I have more than 1 TB free currently.

What I would like to see sometimes are the prices that would be created by a second hand market. That would be real market prices. After all with the asymmetry of only one company selling and all others buying you never really know - could they sell more if only the price would be lower, which games are absolutely overpriced? These interesting questions could be answered much better if a functional second hand market would exist. But it seems it cannot exist without DRM, so not on GOG.

If however someone else with DRM would invent it with none to moderate cuts I would certainly applaud to it.